[MPlayer-users] more 4speaker questions

[Jukka Tastula]

On Monday 07 October 2002 21:38, gabor wrote:

> 1.
> when i'm playing an ac3(5.1) movie, ac3 5.1 means that it contains 6
> (5?) mono audio channels. correct?

Yes. DD has 5 discrete channels of audio and one lower band channel for 
subwoofer. That's why its called 5.1 and not 6.

> 2.
> i'm trying to use the sp/dif on my sb-live ( -afm hwac3 ) ( with no
> success for now :-) ....
> so let's assume it would work...
> now that means that i send the ac3 data directly to the card. correct?
> but now how does the card know if he should create 6channels or
> 4channels? ( maybe this is not mplayer's problem, but maybe someone can
> answer this )

The card does not decode it so it does not need to know how many channels 
there are. That's why its called "passthrough". You need an external 
amplifier with DD decoder to actually hear the 6 channels.